In this post more than two years ago, I juxtaposed Colombia’s long-standing and very deliberate efforts to eradicate coca with the more recent policies of the country’s coffee institutions, which I suggested may be contributing unintentionally to the eradication of the traditional coffee varieties that made Colombian coffee famous. The post was inspired by my […]

I explained here last week that we subjected the Castillo and Caturra samples we collected for the Colombia Sensory Trial to two different kinds of sensory evaluation: two cupping panels at Intelligentsia Roasting Works in Chicago that applied the CQI’s Q protocols and two sensory panels at the Sensory Analysis Center at Kansas State University […]

The first part of the Colombia Sensory Trial featured coffee buyers and quality control experts from some of the most important coffee organizations in the Americas. During two cupping panels at Intelligentsia Roasting Works in Chicago, they scored pairs of Castillo and Caturra samples collected from 22 farms in Nariño, Colombia. The second part enlisted […]

Earlier this month, I had the honor of presenting to the SCAA Symposium the preliminary results of the work we did with friends in the research and specialty coffee communities on the Colombia Sensory Trial. The following day, the Colombian Coffee Hub published this summary of my presentation, which concluded with my observation that the […]

For my first few posts on Coffeelands, I’d like to explore a number of issues regarding coffee varietal development and farmer adoption. This week’s post will look at the undercard of the Caturra vs. Castillo bout.

Yesterday I had the honor to present the preliminary results of the Colombia Sensory Trial at the 2015 SCAA Symposium. The Colombia Sensory Trial is a cross-sector collaboration with allies in the research community (the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Kansas State University and World Coffee Research), industry (Counter Culture, Federación Nacional de Cafeteros, George […]

In Nariño, Colombia, we have been working for more than three years to build relationships between the 1,600 smallholder growers who participate in our Borderlands Coffee Project and six allies in the marketplace who are part of the project’s Advisory Council. This year, four of those companies purchased 41 separate lots from 324 different growers, […]

A year ago we made three New Year’s resolutions on this blog: Generate more results-based evidence. Help the coffee sector navigate uncharted waters. Borrow a page from the microfinance playbook. Today we revisit those resolutions to see how we did on each one in 2014.

The CRS Coffeelands Blog turned five in November. Here is the content from the blog’s fifth year that you, the readers, liked the best. Or rather, it is is the content you read the most, since in some cases you did not care too much for what I had to say.